Why, exactly is Obama to blame for Federal laws that have been on the books long before he was in the Senate? You wouldn't want him to not enforce those laws, would you? I mean, after all, isn't that what he's accused for vis-à-vis immigration?

Why, exactly is Obama to blame for Federal laws that have been on the books long before he was in the Senate? You wouldn't want him to not enforce those laws, would you? I mean, after all, isn't that what he's accused for vis-à-vis immigration?

He gets blasted when the DOJ exercises prosecutorial discretion, and he gets blasted when the DOJ doesn't exercise prosecutorial discretion? I guess we can argue that the issues in question are very different, but still... the fact is that to you Obama can do no right (just like Bush couldn't do no right to those on the opposite end of the spectrum from you).

As I said before, this insane polarization, fueled by the hyperpartisan dolts and the pundits will be our undoing.

He gets blasted when the DOJ exercises prosecutorial discretion, and he gets blasted when the DOJ doesn't exercise prosecutorial discretion? I guess we can argue that the issues in question are very different, but still... the fact is that to you Obama can do no right (just like Bush couldn't do no right to those on the opposite end of the spectrum from you).

As I said before, this insane polarization, fueled by the hyperpartisan dolts and the pundits will be our undoing.

You think its a good use of limited resources to go after legal pot growers vs violent cartels and massive white collar crime?

You think its a good use of limited resources to go after legal pot growers vs violent cartels and massive white collar crime?

What I think is irrelevant so stop dodging the question. Either the DOJ has prosecutorial discretion or they don't. Either Obama and his Administration should be condemned for not enforcing the laws currently on the books or they shouldn't. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. So, tell us: does the DOJ have prosecutorial discretion or not?

If you're really interested in my personal opinion on the subject (I know you aren't) then no, I don't think it's a good use of resources, but the simple fact is that they are no legal pot growers as far as the Government is concerned (except for one facility that makes Government-issued joints). A state may make growing pot legal, but being a lawyer, you know full well that Federal laws preempt State laws.

Personally, I think laws that are widely ignored and casually broken are simply bad laws and ought to be eliminated. I find the war on marijuana to be a waste of resources and think that if people want to smoke it, that's their business. I personally don't do any drugs, but my take on marijuana is simple: make it legal and impose reasonable restrictions (e.g. be 18+ to buy from licensed dealers and pay tax on the purchase).

Either the DOJ has prosecutorial discretion or they don't. Either Obama and his Administration should be condemned for not enforcing the laws currently on the books or they shouldn't. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Nonsense, there's no either or. Circumstances always vary.

In fact the amount and range of prosecutorial discretion is completely debatable.

Hell, the whole reason we're stuck with mandatory minimums in due to perceived abuses in discretion. But even now...some discretion still exists in sentencing.

Of course there is. Either there is such a thing as prosecutorial discretion of there isn't. Either the DOJ has it or they don't. Don't confuse that simple question with the much more complicated question of when it is appropriate for them to use that discretion and how to do so. That's where the "circumstances" you mention come into play.

If you think laws are unjust and should not be enforced then fight to repeal them. The laws that are on the books should be respected, even when we disagree with them. If we don't, the rule of law is a meaningless, vacuous term.

You can't be for and against something at the same time. This is a simple fact of reality. Just how you can't have your cake and eat it too is a fact of reality. You can try to have your cake and eat it too, but the world in which you live in is rational, and after you're done eating your cake, no matter how hard you try, you can no longer have it.

If you think Obama's DOJ does have prosecutorial discretion, then you can't also think that they don't simply because you disagree with how they apply that discretion and vice-versa. If you have a beef with how they're applying that discretion, that's a whole 'nother perfectly valid topic.

In this April 7, 2011, file photo the U.S. Capitol in Washington is illuminated at night as Congress work late to avert a government shutdown.

After President Richard Nixon was forced from office in 1974, congressional investigators discovered what they believed was the full extent of his use of the FBI and the CIA to engage in domestic spying. In that pre-digital era, the spying consisted of listening to telephone calls, opening mail, and using undercover agents to infiltrate political organizations and, as we know, break into their offices. Nixon claimed he did this for the protection of national security. He also claimed he was entitled to break the law and violate the Constitution. “If the president does it, that means that it’s not illegal,” he once famously said.

Since no one was prosecuted on the basis of data stolen or retrieved by his spies, the courts rarely encountered this behavior and never had to rule on it, and thus it went largely unchecked. A few victims challenged the spying, but the Supreme Court ruled that without palpable harm, the challengers lacked the legal ability to complain in court -- what judges call “standing.”

But many Americans did complain to Congress, which in 1978 enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, commonly called FISA. FISA provided that all domestic surveillance be subject to the search warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, except for spying on foreign agents operating in the U.S. For those cases, FISA established a secret federal court that has been authorized to issue search warrants to spy on foreign agents.

The right to privacy is a natural human right. Its enshrinement in the Constitution has largely kept America from becoming East Germany.

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The constitutional standard for all search warrants is probable cause of crime. FISA, however, established a new, different and lesser standard -- thus unconstitutional on its face since Congress is bound by, and cannot change, the Constitution -- of probable cause of status. The status was that of an agent of a foreign power. So, under FISA, the feds needed to demonstrate to a secret court only that a non-American physically present in the U.S., perhaps under the guise of a student, diplomat or embassy janitor, was really an agent of a foreign power, and the demonstration of that agency alone was sufficient to authorize a search warrant to listen to the agent’s telephone calls or read his mail.

Over time, the requirement of status as a foreign agent was modified to status as a foreign person. This, of course, was an even lesser standard and one rarely rejected by the FISA court. In fact, that court has rarely rejected anything, having granted search warrants in well over 97 percent of applications. This is hardly harmless, as foreign persons in the U.S. are frequently talking to Americans in the U.S. Thus, not only did FISA violate the privacy rights of foreigners (the Fourth Amendment protects “people,” not just Americans); it violated the rights of those with whom they were communicating, American or non-American.

It gets worse. The Patriot Act, which was enacted in 2001 and permits federal agents to write their own search warrants in violation of the Fourth Amendment, actually amended FISA so as to do away with the FISA-issued search warrant requirement when the foreign person is outside the U.S. This means that if you email or call your cousin in Europe or a business colleague in Asia, the feds are reading or listening, without a warrant, without suspicion, without records and without evidence of anything unlawful.

The Patriot Act amendments to FISA also permit the feds to use anything they see or hear while spying in a federal court. The amended FISA statute permitting these warrantless searches of emails, telephone calls and postal mail expires at the end of this month. Last month, the House quietly voted to extend this dreadful authority for another five years, and in the next week, the Senate will consider doing the same.

What’s wrong with Congress?

FISA gives the government unchecked authority to snoop on all Americans who communicate with any foreign person, in direct contravention of the Fourth Amendment. The right to privacy is a natural human right. Its enshrinement in the Constitution has largely kept America from becoming East Germany. Moreover, everyone in Congress has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, which could not be more clear: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects…” shall not be violated, except via a warrant issued by a neutral judge upon the judge finding probable cause of crime. If we let Congress, which is a creature of the Constitution, change the Constitution, then no one’s liberty or property is safe, and freedom is dependent upon the political needs of those in power.

The president and the leadership of both political parties in both houses of Congress have abandoned their oaths to uphold the Constitution. They have claimed that foreigners and their American communicants are committed to destroying the country and only the invasion of everyone’s right to privacy will keep us safe. They are violating the privacy of us all to find the communications of a few. Who will keep us safe from them? Their behavior is committed to destroying the Constitution.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. His latest is “Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom.”

Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime.

Not everyone was on board. "This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public," Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security, argued in the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.

A week later, the attorney general signed the changes into effect.

Documents

NCTC Guidelines -- 2008

NCTC Guidelines – 2012

Homeland Security Department Email about the NCTC Guidelines

.Through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews with officials at numerous agencies, The Wall Street Journal has reconstructed the clash over the counterterrorism program within the administration of President Barack Obama. The debate was a confrontation between some who viewed it as a matter of efficiency—how long to keep data, for instance, or where it should be stored—and others who saw it as granting authority for unprecedented government surveillance of U.S. citizens.

The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.

Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans "reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information" may be permanently retained.

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National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen testifies before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Capitol Hill in January..The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.

"It's breathtaking" in its scope, said a former senior administration official familiar with the White House debate.

Counterterrorism officials say they will be circumspect with the data. "The guidelines provide rigorous oversight to protect the information that we have, for authorized and narrow purposes," said Alexander Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the parent agency for the National Counterterrorism Center.

The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution says that searches of "persons, houses, papers and effects" shouldn't be conducted without "probable cause" that a crime has been committed. But that doesn't cover records the government creates in the normal course of business with citizens.

Congress specifically sought to prevent government agents from rifling through government files indiscriminately when it passed the Federal Privacy Act in 1974. The act prohibits government agencies from sharing data with each other for purposes that aren't "compatible" with the reason the data were originally collected.

Three Years of WSJ Privacy Insights

The Wall Street Journal is conducting a long-running investigation into the profound transformation of personal privacy in America.

See full privacy coverage.But the Federal Privacy Act allows agencies to exempt themselves from many requirements by placing notices in the Federal Register, the government's daily publication of proposed rules. In practice, these privacy-act notices are rarely contested by government watchdogs or members of the public. "All you have to do is publish a notice in the Federal Register and you can do whatever you want," says Robert Gellman, a privacy consultant who advises agencies on how to comply with the Privacy Act.

As a result, the National Counterterrorism Center program's opponents within the administration—led by Ms. Callahan of Homeland Security—couldn't argue that the program would violate the law. Instead, they were left to question whether the rules were good policy.

Under the new rules issued in March, the National Counterterrorism Center, known as NCTC, can obtain almost any database the government collects that it says is "reasonably believed" to contain "terrorism information." The list could potentially include almost any government database, from financial forms submitted by people seeking federally backed mortgages to the health records of people who sought treatment at Veterans Administration hospitals.

Previous government proposals to scrutinize massive amounts of data about innocent people have caused an uproar. In 2002, the Pentagon's research arm proposed a program called Total Information Awareness that sought to analyze both public and private databases for terror clues. It would have been far broader than the NCTC's current program, examining many nongovernmental pools of data as well.

"If terrorist organizations are going to plan and execute attacks against the United States, their people must engage in transactions and they will leave signatures," the program's promoter, Admiral John Poindexter, said at the time. "We must be able to pick this signal out of the noise."

Adm. Poindexter's plans drew fire from across the political spectrum over the privacy implications of sorting through every single document available about U.S. citizens. Conservative columnist William Safire called the plan a "supersnoop's dream." Liberal columnist Molly Ivins suggested it could be akin to fascism. Congress eventually defunded the program.

The National Counterterrorism Center's ideas faced no similar public resistance. For one thing, the debate happened behind closed doors. In addition, unlike the Pentagon, the NCTC was created in 2004 specifically to use data to connect the dots in the fight against terrorism.

Even after eight years in existence, the agency isn't well known. "We're still a bit of a startup and still having to prove ourselves," said director Matthew Olsen in a rare public appearance this summer at the Aspen Institute, a leadership think tank.

The agency's offices are tucked away in an unmarked building set back from the road in the woodsy suburban neighborhood of McLean, Va. Many employees are on loan from other agencies, and they don't conduct surveillance or gather clues directly. Instead, they analyze data provided by others.

The agency's best-known product is a database called TIDE, which stands for the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. TIDE contains more than 500,000 identities suspected of terror links. Some names are known or suspected terrorists; others are terrorists' friends and families; still more are people with some loose affiliation to a terrorist.

Intelligence officials met at the White House in March to discuss the NCTC proposal with John Brennan, the president's chief counterterrorism adviser..TIDE files are important because they are used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to compile terrorist "watchlists." These are lists that can block a person from boarding an airplane or obtaining a visa.

The watchlist system failed spectacularly on Christmas Day 2009 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian man, boarded a flight to Detroit from Amsterdam wearing explosives sewn into his undergarments. He wasn't on the watchlist.

He eventually pleaded guilty to terror-related charges and is imprisoned. His bomb didn't properly detonate.

However, Mr. Abdulmutallab and his underwear did alter U.S. intelligence-gathering. A Senate investigation revealed that NCTC had received information about him but had failed to query other government databases about him. In a scathing finding, the Senate report said, "the NCTC was not organized adequately to fulfill its missions."

"This was not a failure to collect or share intelligence," said John Brennan, the president's chief counterterrorism adviser, at a White House press conference in January 2010. "It was a failure to connect and integrate and understand the intelligence we had."

As result, Mr. Obama demanded a watchlist overhaul. Agencies were ordered to send all their leads to NCTC, and NCTC was ordered to "pursue thoroughly and exhaustively terrorism threat threads."

Getty ImagesMatthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center: 'We're still a bit of a startup and still having to prove ourselves.'.Quickly, NCTC was flooded with terror tips—each of which it was obligated to "exhaustively" pursue. By May 2010 there was a huge backlog, according a report by the Government Accountability Office.

Legal obstacles emerged. NCTC analysts were permitted to query federal-agency databases only for "terrorism datapoints," say, one specific person's name, or the passengers on one particular flight. They couldn't look through the databases trolling for general "patterns." And, if they wanted to copy entire data sets, they were required to remove information about innocent U.S. people "upon discovery."

But they didn't always know who was innocent. A person might seem innocent today, until new details emerge tomorrow.

"What we learned from Christmas Day"—from the failed underwear bomb—was that some information "might seem more relevant later," says Mr. Joel, the national intelligence agency's civil liberties officer. "We realized we needed it to be retained longer."

Late last year, for instance, NCTC obtained an entire database from Homeland Security for analysis, according to a person familiar with the transaction. Homeland Security provided the disks on the condition that NCTC would remove all innocent U.S. person data after 30 days.

After 30 days, a Homeland Security team visited and found that the data hadn't yet been removed. In fact, NCTC hadn't even finished uploading the files to its own computers, that person said. It can take weeks simply to upload and organize the mammoth data sets.

Homeland Security granted a 30-day extension. That deadline was missed, too. So Homeland Security revoked NCTC's access to the data.

To fix problems like these that had cropped up since the Abdulmutallab incident, NCTC proposed the major expansion of its powers that would ultimately get debated at the March meeting in the White House. It moved to ditch the requirement that it discard the innocent-person data. And it asked for broader authority to troll for patterns in the data.

As early as February 2011, NCTC's proposal was raising concerns at the privacy offices of both Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, according to emails reviewed by the Journal.

Privacy offices are a relatively new phenomenon in the intelligence community. Most were created at the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. Privacy officers are often in the uncomfortable position of identifying obstacles to plans proposed by their superiors.

At the Department of Justice, Chief Privacy Officer Nancy Libin raised concerns about whether the guidelines could unfairly target innocent people, these people said. Some research suggests that, statistically speaking, there are too few terror attacks for predictive patterns to emerge. The risk, then, is that innocent behavior gets misunderstood—say, a man buying chemicals (for a child's science fair) and a timer (for the sprinkler) sets off false alarms.

An August government report indicates that, as of last year, NCTC wasn't doing predictive pattern-matching.

The internal debate was more heated at Homeland Security. Ms. Callahan and colleague Margo Schlanger, who headed the 100-person Homeland Security office for civil rights and civil liberties, were concerned about the implications of turning over vast troves of data to the counterterrorism center, these people said.

They and Ms. Libin at the Justice Department argued that the failure to catch Mr. Abdulmutallab wasn't caused by the lack of a suspect—he had already been flagged—but by a failure to investigate him fully. So amassing more data about innocent people wasn't necessarily the right solution.

The most sensitive Homeland Security data trove at stake was the Advanced Passenger Information System. It contains the name, gender, birth date and travel information for every airline passenger entering the U.S.

House Oversight CommitteeMary Ellen Callahan, then-chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security: 'This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public.'.Previously, Homeland Security had pledged to keep passenger data only for 12 months. But NCTC was proposing to copy and keep it for up to five years. Ms. Callahan argued this would break promises the agency had made to the public about its use of personal data, these people said.

Discussions sometimes got testy, according to emails reviewed by the Journal. In one case, Ms. Callahan sent an email complaining that "examples" provided to her by an unnamed intelligence official were "complete non-sequiturs" and "non-responsive."

In May 2011, Ms. Callahan and Ms. Schlanger raised their concerns with the chief of their agency, Janet Napolitano. They fired off a memo under the longwinded title, "How Best to Express the Department's Privacy and Civil Liberties Concerns over Draft Guidelines Proposed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center," according to an email obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The contents of the memo, which appears to run several pages, were redacted.

The two also kept pushing the NCTC officials to justify why they couldn't search for terrorism clues less invasively, these people said. "I'm not sure I'm totally prepared with the firestorm we're about to create," Ms. Schlanger emailed Ms. Callahan in November, referring to the fact that the two wanted more privacy protections. Ms. Schlanger returned to her faculty position at the University of Michigan Law School soon after but remains an adviser to Homeland Security.

To resolve the issue, Homeland Security's deputy secretary, Jane Holl Lute, requested the March meeting at the White House. The second in command from Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the FBI, NCTC and the office of the director of national intelligence sat at the small conference table. Normal protocol for such meeting is for staffers such as Ms. Callahan to sit against the walls of the room and keep silent.

By this point, Ms. Libin's concern that innocent people could be inadvertently targeted had been largely overruled at the Department of Justice, these people said. Colleagues there were more concerned about missing the next terrorist threat.

That left Ms. Callahan as the most prominent opponent of the proposed changes. In an unusual move, Ms. Lute asked Ms. Callahan to speak about Homeland Security's privacy concerns. Ms. Callahan argued that the rules would constitute a "sea change" because, whenever citizens interact with the government, the first question asked will be, are they a terrorist?

Mr. Brennan considered the arguments. And within a few days, the attorney general, Eric Holder, had signed the new guidelines. The Justice Department declined to comment about the debate over the guidelines.

Under the new rules, every federal agency must negotiate terms under which it would hand over databases to NCTC. This year, Ms. Callahan left Homeland Security for private practice, and Ms. Libin left the Justice Department to join a private firm.

Homeland Security is currently working out the details to give the NCTC three data sets—the airline-passenger database known as APIS; another airline-passenger database containing information about non-U.S. citizen visitors to the U.S.; and a database about people seeking refugee asylum. It previously agreed to share databases containing information about foreign-exchange students and visa applications.

Once the terms are set, Homeland Security is likely to post a notice in the Federal Register. The public can submit comments to the Federal Register about proposed changes, although Homeland Security isn't required to make changes based on the comments.

When a former senior White House official describes a nationwide surveillance effort as “breathtaking,” you know civil liberties activists are preparing for a fight.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the little-known National Counterterrorism Center, based in an unmarked building in McLean, Va., has been granted sweeping new authority to store and monitor massive datasets about innocent Americans.

After internal wrangling over privacy and civil liberties issues, the Justice Department reportedly signed off on controversial new guidelines earlier this year. The guidelines allow the NCTC, for the first time, to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, using “predictive pattern-matching,” to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. The data the counterterrorism center has access to, according to the Journal, includes “entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others.”

Notably, the Journal reports that these changes also allow databases about U.S. civilians to be handed over to foreign governments for analysis, presumably so that they too can attempt to determine future criminal actions. The Department of Homeland Security’s former chief privacy officer said that it represents a “sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public.”

The snooping effort, which officials say is subject to “rigorous oversight,” is reminiscent of the so-called Total Information Awareness initiative, dreamt up in the aftermath of 9/11 by the Pentagon’s research unit DARPA. The aim of the TIA initiative was essentially to create a kind of ubiquitous pre-crime surveillance regime monitoring public and private databases. It was largely defunded in 2003, after civil liberties concerns. However, other similar efforts have continued, such as through the work of the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence-gathering “Fusion Centers.” Most recently, Fusion Centers were subjected to scathing criticism from congressional investigators, who found that they were accumulating masses of data about “suspicious” activity that was not of any use. The intelligence being swept up, the investigators found, was “oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections.”

Such sweeping surveillance efforts pose difficulties for the authorities because they can end up drowning in data, attempting to find a needle in a haystack, in the process deeming innocent people suspicious. As the Journal’s Julia Angwin notes, the risk is that “innocent behavior gets misunderstood—say, a man buying chemicals (for a child's science fair) and a timer (for the sprinkler) sets off false alarms.” The U.S. government clearly feels far-reaching surveillance initiatives are necessary to help detect potential future terror attacks. But ultimately, in a democracy, the decision should surely rest in the hands of the American public. It is a question of balance: How much liberty should be sacrificed in the name of security? The revelations about the NCTC’s activities may be about to rekindle that debate.

Of course there is. Either there is such a thing as prosecutorial discretion of there isn't. Either the DOJ has it or they don't. Don't confuse that simple question with the much more complicated question of when it is appropriate for them to use that discretion and how to do so. That's where the "circumstances" you mention come into play.

Right. But whether it exists isn't debatable. Whether the DOJ has it isn't debatable. These are binary questions about facts.

Of course it exists. Since you're not bright enough to figure it out, I dispensed with your childishness and went right to the real discussion.

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You are confusing sentencing discretion, which is something something that Judges and prosecutors have, and prosecutorial discretion, which is something prosecutors have. Nice try though.

That's called an analagous situation. You're a lot slower than I thought, lol.

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If you think laws are unjust and should not be enforced then fight to repeal them. The laws that are on the books should be respected, even when we disagree with them. If we don't, the rule of law is a meaningless, vacuous term.

Hell no. I can't imagine what things would be like if certain groups hadn't practiced civil disobedience.

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You can't be for and against something at the same time. This is a simple fact of reality. Just how you can't have your cake and eat it too is a fact of reality. You can try to have your cake and eat it too, but the world in which you live in is rational, and after you're done eating your cake, no matter how hard you try, you can no longer have it.

If you think Obama's DOJ does have prosecutorial discretion, then you can't also think that they don't simply because you disagree with how they apply that discretion and vice-versa. If you have a beef with how they're applying that discretion, that's a whole 'nother perfectly valid topic.

No, not in the childish sense you're attempting to apply it.

You can be for them having it in certain circumstances.You can be against them having it in certain circumstances.

That's called an analagous situation. You're a lot slower than I thought, lol.

I'm not sure what an analagous situation is. But on the off-chance you meant analogous I can tell you that it's not really analogous at all. Similes are metaphors in that they're both analogies. Your little example is... well... some sort of verbal slip-and-fall.

Hell no. I can't imagine what things would be like if certain groups hadn't practiced civil disobedience.

Right. But you will notice that those who performed acts of civil disobedience wanted to be "judged" by the laws on the books at the time to demonstrate the profound injustice of those laws. They didn't just say "Don't apply the law. Fuck the law." They said "We believe this law to be flawed, unfair and unjust. We will challenge it and force you to use it, and in doing so, show just how unjust it is."

You can be for them having it in certain circumstances.You can be against them having it in certain circumstances.

Right. But the circumstances must be objective. You cannot be for and against granting the DOJ prosecutorial discretion and hinging the particular decision solely on whether you like the particular law in question. There's a word for one who does that sort of thing.

And Skip, out of curiosity: in what circumstances do you think the DOJ should have discretion and in what circumstances should it not have it?

"They may not be doing anything but walking their dog," he said. "But they're going to have to prove it." . . .

"This fear is what's given us the reason to do this. Once I have stats and people saying they're scared, we can do this," he said. "It allows us to do what we're fixing to do." . . .

"To ask you for your ID, I have to have a reason," he said. "Well, I've got statistical reasons that say I've got a lot of crime right now, which gives me probable cause to ask what you're doing out. Then when I add that people are scared...then that gives us even more [reason] to ask why are you here and what are you doing in this area." . . .

"Anyone that's out walking, because of the crime and the fear factor, [could be stopped]," he said . . .

Individuals who do not produce identification when asked could be charged with obstructing a governmental operation, according to Stovall.

Here's the least surprising line in the article:

Stovall said he did not consult an attorney before announcing his plans to combat crime. Stovall added that he realized there was little difference between what he was proposing and martial law--and that he didn't much care.

The mayor and city attorney have apparently walked the idea back, at least a little. But the police chief isn't wavering. And of course it's his cops who will be enforcing the law.

Using SWAT teams for routine patrols isn't uncommon. Fresno did this for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The city sent its Violent Crimes Suppression Unit into poorer neighborhoods and stopped, confronted, questioned, and searched nearly everyone they encountered. "It's a war," one SWAT officer told Christian Parenti in a a report for The Naiton (not available online). Another said, "If you're 21, male, living in one of these neighborhoods, and you're not in our computer, then there's something definitely wrong."

A 1999 report in the Boston Globe found similar units patrolling the streets of Indianapolis and San Francisco, which the reporter noted gave the communities under siege "all the ambiance of the West Bank."

In a 1997 survey, the criminologist Peter Kraska found that about one in five cities in his survey used their SWAT teams for routine patrols. It seems likely that number has fallen since then as the crime rate has dropped (the Fresno VCSU was disbanded in 2002), but it's hard to say for sure. The total number of SWAT teams has only increased since then, as has the number of situations in which they're utilized.

But Stovall's comments show that it isn't so much a rise in crime that allows these sorts of police actions to happen, it's the fear of crime. (Though there has been an actual increase in crime in Paragould.) Back in the early 1970s when Nixon was preparing to impose his new crime bill on Washington, D.C., he ran into a problem. According to FBI data, crime was actually starting to fall in D.C. Nixon's strategy was to make D.C. the "model city" to show off his tough anti-crime policies. The fact that crime was already falling presented two problems: 1) It could make the city less fearful, resulting in less pressure on Congress to push through his bill, and 2) it would make it more difficult for Nixon to claim credit for any crime drop in the city later. So Nixon's Justice Department sat on the figures. They refused to release them until after they had won on Capitol Hill.

The fear of crime is ever-present, even when crime isn't. For example, despite the fact that the crime rate has been dropping dramatically for nearly 20 years*--to historic lows--70 percent of Americans still think crime is getting worse.

I'm sure the cable news obsession with sensational crime stories and the emergence of tragedy vultures like Nancy Grace have a lot to do with it. Long-developing trends like the crime drop by definition aren't daily news. Crime is, even when it's down. I've seen it stated over and over in the Newtown coverage that mass shootings are on the rise. As I pointed out in the morning links, there is no evidence for that, and in fact the numbers suggest they're on the wane. They happen so infrequently that there simply aren't enough data points to say for certain.

Unfortunately, empirical data aren't nearly as compelling as images of victims and mug shots of scary-looking criminals. And like Nixon, today's politicians and law enforcement officials know that you don't pass new laws and give the police new powers by assuaging public fear. You get these things by stoking it.

(*There was a slight uptick in the crime figures in 2011, driven mostly by an increase in minor assaults.)

"They may not be doing anything but walking their dog," he said. "But they're going to have to prove it." . . .

"This fear is what's given us the reason to do this. Once I have stats and people saying they're scared, we can do this," he said. "It allows us to do what we're fixing to do." . . .

"To ask you for your ID, I have to have a reason," he said. "Well, I've got statistical reasons that say I've got a lot of crime right now, which gives me probable cause to ask what you're doing out. Then when I add that people are scared...then that gives us even more [reason] to ask why are you here and what are you doing in this area." . . .

"Anyone that's out walking, because of the crime and the fear factor, [could be stopped]," he said . . .

Individuals who do not produce identification when asked could be charged with obstructing a governmental operation, according to Stovall.

Here's the least surprising line in the article:

Stovall said he did not consult an attorney before announcing his plans to combat crime. Stovall added that he realized there was little difference between what he was proposing and martial law--and that he didn't much care.

The mayor and city attorney have apparently walked the idea back, at least a little. But the police chief isn't wavering. And of course it's his cops who will be enforcing the law.

Using SWAT teams for routine patrols isn't uncommon. Fresno did this for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The city sent its Violent Crimes Suppression Unit into poorer neighborhoods and stopped, confronted, questioned, and searched nearly everyone they encountered. "It's a war," one SWAT officer told Christian Parenti in a a report for The Naiton (not available online). Another said, "If you're 21, male, living in one of these neighborhoods, and you're not in our computer, then there's something definitely wrong."

A 1999 report in the Boston Globe found similar units patrolling the streets of Indianapolis and San Francisco, which the reporter noted gave the communities under siege "all the ambiance of the West Bank."

In a 1997 survey, the criminologist Peter Kraska found that about one in five cities in his survey used their SWAT teams for routine patrols. It seems likely that number has fallen since then as the crime rate has dropped (the Fresno VCSU was disbanded in 2002), but it's hard to say for sure. The total number of SWAT teams has only increased since then, as has the number of situations in which they're utilized.

But Stovall's comments show that it isn't so much a rise in crime that allows these sorts of police actions to happen, it's the fear of crime. (Though there has been an actual increase in crime in Paragould.) Back in the early 1970s when Nixon was preparing to impose his new crime bill on Washington, D.C., he ran into a problem. According to FBI data, crime was actually starting to fall in D.C. Nixon's strategy was to make D.C. the "model city" to show off his tough anti-crime policies. The fact that crime was already falling presented two problems: 1) It could make the city less fearful, resulting in less pressure on Congress to push through his bill, and 2) it would make it more difficult for Nixon to claim credit for any crime drop in the city later. So Nixon's Justice Department sat on the figures. They refused to release them until after they had won on Capitol Hill.

The fear of crime is ever-present, even when crime isn't. For example, despite the fact that the crime rate has been dropping dramatically for nearly 20 years*--to historic lows--70 percent of Americans still think crime is getting worse.

I'm sure the cable news obsession with sensational crime stories and the emergence of tragedy vultures like Nancy Grace have a lot to do with it. Long-developing trends like the crime drop by definition aren't daily news. Crime is, even when it's down. I've seen it stated over and over in the Newtown coverage that mass shootings are on the rise. As I pointed out in the morning links, there is no evidence for that, and in fact the numbers suggest they're on the wane. They happen so infrequently that there simply aren't enough data points to say for certain.

Unfortunately, empirical data aren't nearly as compelling as images of victims and mug shots of scary-looking criminals. And like Nixon, today's politicians and law enforcement officials know that you don't pass new laws and give the police new powers by assuaging public fear. You get these things by stoking it.

(*There was a slight uptick in the crime figures in 2011, driven mostly by an increase in minor assaults.)

"They may not be doing anything but walking their dog," he said. "But they're going to have to prove it." . . .

"This fear is what's given us the reason to do this. Once I have stats and people saying they're scared, we can do this," he said. "It allows us to do what we're fixing to do." . . .

"To ask you for your ID, I have to have a reason," he said. "Well, I've got statistical reasons that say I've got a lot of crime right now, which gives me probable cause to ask what you're doing out. Then when I add that people are scared...then that gives us even more [reason] to ask why are you here and what are you doing in this area." . . .

"Anyone that's out walking, because of the crime and the fear factor, [could be stopped]," he said . . .

Individuals who do not produce identification when asked could be charged with obstructing a governmental operation, according to Stovall.

Here's the least surprising line in the article:

Stovall said he did not consult an attorney before announcing his plans to combat crime. Stovall added that he realized there was little difference between what he was proposing and martial law--and that he didn't much care.

The mayor and city attorney have apparently walked the idea back, at least a little. But the police chief isn't wavering. And of course it's his cops who will be enforcing the law.

Using SWAT teams for routine patrols isn't uncommon. Fresno did this for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The city sent its Violent Crimes Suppression Unit into poorer neighborhoods and stopped, confronted, questioned, and searched nearly everyone they encountered. "It's a war," one SWAT officer told Christian Parenti in a a report for The Naiton (not available online). Another said, "If you're 21, male, living in one of these neighborhoods, and you're not in our computer, then there's something definitely wrong."

A 1999 report in the Boston Globe found similar units patrolling the streets of Indianapolis and San Francisco, which the reporter noted gave the communities under siege "all the ambiance of the West Bank."

In a 1997 survey, the criminologist Peter Kraska found that about one in five cities in his survey used their SWAT teams for routine patrols. It seems likely that number has fallen since then as the crime rate has dropped (the Fresno VCSU was disbanded in 2002), but it's hard to say for sure. The total number of SWAT teams has only increased since then, as has the number of situations in which they're utilized.

But Stovall's comments show that it isn't so much a rise in crime that allows these sorts of police actions to happen, it's the fear of crime. (Though there has been an actual increase in crime in Paragould.) Back in the early 1970s when Nixon was preparing to impose his new crime bill on Washington, D.C., he ran into a problem. According to FBI data, crime was actually starting to fall in D.C. Nixon's strategy was to make D.C. the "model city" to show off his tough anti-crime policies. The fact that crime was already falling presented two problems: 1) It could make the city less fearful, resulting in less pressure on Congress to push through his bill, and 2) it would make it more difficult for Nixon to claim credit for any crime drop in the city later. So Nixon's Justice Department sat on the figures. They refused to release them until after they had won on Capitol Hill.

The fear of crime is ever-present, even when crime isn't. For example, despite the fact that the crime rate has been dropping dramatically for nearly 20 years*--to historic lows--70 percent of Americans still think crime is getting worse.

I'm sure the cable news obsession with sensational crime stories and the emergence of tragedy vultures like Nancy Grace have a lot to do with it. Long-developing trends like the crime drop by definition aren't daily news. Crime is, even when it's down. I've seen it stated over and over in the Newtown coverage that mass shootings are on the rise. As I pointed out in the morning links, there is no evidence for that, and in fact the numbers suggest they're on the wane. They happen so infrequently that there simply aren't enough data points to say for certain.

Unfortunately, empirical data aren't nearly as compelling as images of victims and mug shots of scary-looking criminals. And like Nixon, today's politicians and law enforcement officials know that you don't pass new laws and give the police new powers by assuaging public fear. You get these things by stoking it.

(*There was a slight uptick in the crime figures in 2011, driven mostly by an increase in minor assaults.)

"They may not be doing anything but walking their dog," he said. "But they're going to have to prove it." . . .

"This fear is what's given us the reason to do this. Once I have stats and people saying they're scared, we can do this," he said. "It allows us to do what we're fixing to do." . . .

"To ask you for your ID, I have to have a reason," he said. "Well, I've got statistical reasons that say I've got a lot of crime right now, which gives me probable cause to ask what you're doing out. Then when I add that people are scared...then that gives us even more [reason] to ask why are you here and what are you doing in this area." . . .

"Anyone that's out walking, because of the crime and the fear factor, [could be stopped]," he said . . .

Individuals who do not produce identification when asked could be charged with obstructing a governmental operation, according to Stovall.

Here's the least surprising line in the article:

Stovall said he did not consult an attorney before announcing his plans to combat crime. Stovall added that he realized there was little difference between what he was proposing and martial law--and that he didn't much care.

The mayor and city attorney have apparently walked the idea back, at least a little. But the police chief isn't wavering. And of course it's his cops who will be enforcing the law.

Using SWAT teams for routine patrols isn't uncommon. Fresno did this for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The city sent its Violent Crimes Suppression Unit into poorer neighborhoods and stopped, confronted, questioned, and searched nearly everyone they encountered. "It's a war," one SWAT officer told Christian Parenti in a a report for The Naiton (not available online). Another said, "If you're 21, male, living in one of these neighborhoods, and you're not in our computer, then there's something definitely wrong."

A 1999 report in the Boston Globe found similar units patrolling the streets of Indianapolis and San Francisco, which the reporter noted gave the communities under siege "all the ambiance of the West Bank."

In a 1997 survey, the criminologist Peter Kraska found that about one in five cities in his survey used their SWAT teams for routine patrols. It seems likely that number has fallen since then as the crime rate has dropped (the Fresno VCSU was disbanded in 2002), but it's hard to say for sure. The total number of SWAT teams has only increased since then, as has the number of situations in which they're utilized.

But Stovall's comments show that it isn't so much a rise in crime that allows these sorts of police actions to happen, it's the fear of crime. (Though there has been an actual increase in crime in Paragould.) Back in the early 1970s when Nixon was preparing to impose his new crime bill on Washington, D.C., he ran into a problem. According to FBI data, crime was actually starting to fall in D.C. Nixon's strategy was to make D.C. the "model city" to show off his tough anti-crime policies. The fact that crime was already falling presented two problems: 1) It could make the city less fearful, resulting in less pressure on Congress to push through his bill, and 2) it would make it more difficult for Nixon to claim credit for any crime drop in the city later. So Nixon's Justice Department sat on the figures. They refused to release them until after they had won on Capitol Hill.

The fear of crime is ever-present, even when crime isn't. For example, despite the fact that the crime rate has been dropping dramatically for nearly 20 years*--to historic lows--70 percent of Americans still think crime is getting worse.

I'm sure the cable news obsession with sensational crime stories and the emergence of tragedy vultures like Nancy Grace have a lot to do with it. Long-developing trends like the crime drop by definition aren't daily news. Crime is, even when it's down. I've seen it stated over and over in the Newtown coverage that mass shootings are on the rise. As I pointed out in the morning links, there is no evidence for that, and in fact the numbers suggest they're on the wane. They happen so infrequently that there simply aren't enough data points to say for certain.

Unfortunately, empirical data aren't nearly as compelling as images of victims and mug shots of scary-looking criminals. And like Nixon, today's politicians and law enforcement officials know that you don't pass new laws and give the police new powers by assuaging public fear. You get these things by stoking it.

(*There was a slight uptick in the crime figures in 2011, driven mostly by an increase in minor assaults.)

"To ask you for your ID, I have to have a reason," he said. "Well, I've got statistical reasons that say I've got a lot of crime right now, which gives me probable cause to ask what you're doing out. Then when I add that people are scared...then that gives us even more [reason] to ask why are you here and what are you doing in this area."

Wow... Talk about not knowing what the law says. He needs a specific articulable suspicion. Not some "well, statistically speaking, a crime is committed every second, and a second has passed... so... hands up!"

The Courts ought to slap this police chief hard enough to make him think he's a Cadet again... Fucking idiots.